Looks like this is a series of field recordings that have some sort of natural rhythm. Like the first track, recorded at a car manufacturing plant. The machines are beating and bending metal to a somewhat set time, but things come and go, different parts change, just like in a real song. Some of the rhythms are more obvious and stated, while others would fall into a beat in the same way some ambient techno has a motion, but not really the 4/4 thing going on. Some tracks are also louder, while others are more subtle textures.

Heathen Harvest | Andrew Quitter
Genre: Field Recordings / Drone Ambient
This is a really cool little compilation with a focus on the use of field recordings that have strong natural rhythm. Artist from all over the world contribute 4-10 minute tracks with a wide range of atmosphere and subtlety. Due to the liner notes that briefly describe where the track was recorded, I get the feeling that these tracks are unedited and exactly how they sounded when they were caught on tape. Most of the tracks have a real strong percussion-like rhythm that brings to mind everything from musique concrete, to minimal electronica. While other tracks have rhythms in the sense that atmospheric sounds repeat in the same way that they would in an ambient or drone oriented piece of music. Overall the album flows very nicely with only a few tracks that I feel are distracting from the theme of the record. There is a lot to enjoy for people into a lot of different kinds of music, and you really feel like this is a comp of actual songs rather than a study in „academic sound theory“, or other beard stroking ideas that tend to turn some people away from this kind of album.

Peter Cusack starts the disc off right with a really cool recording taken inside of a Jaguar car manufacturing plant. The robotic laborers buzz, click, drill, and pound their way through making what I assume is the frame of a car. What’s really cool about this song is the way that the robots are working assembly line style, which gives the recording „parts“ like an actual song. It’s a locked grove of mechanical hands, never losing time or missing a beat. I can see why this track was chosen to start the album with, because fans of many different types of music can find their own reasons to like it. I enjoy it because it reminds me of the early industrial music I love so much. Others might enjoy it because of their love for robots and technology, while others may enjoy it just because of the cool rhythms it makes. The track ends mysteriously with the sound of lounge music being played on the overhead P.A. speakers, while the machines are cooling down emitting strange hiss’.

This track is a perfect example of how the sounds found on this album are anonymous enough that they can be pleasing to a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. For instance, the second track by Eric La Casa could easily be compared to crusty lo-fi noise music or the background clatter of a caged beast in some 1950’s B horror movie. The third track by Roland Etzin ebbs and flows with deep bass heavy drones that any fan of dark ambient would love, while the eighth track by Lasse-Marc Riek sounds like an analog synth pulsating along with a huge dream-like ambient quality. Throw it all in a nice digi-pack with a flawless mastering job, and you come away with a really beautiful compilation with a lot of replay value.

A series of wonderful artists follow one another in Cherry Music (Japan) and Gruenrekorder (Germany) split release. It consists of field recordings with an underlying ‚intrinsic‘ rhythm, hence the title. This is an idea that in different ways permeates all ten selected tracks. Among the experimenters with their clicking, drilling and various interferences we find Peter Cusack, struggling with a car-assembly laboratory, before hearing from Eric La Casa who presents sounds without direct reference points, but which generate a gloomy atmosphere, nervously iterated and screaming. Roland Etzin is also quite strict in placing his microphones, leading to the same dark atmospheres, while Jez Riley French, after several seconds of silence, brings the listener back to a dull clashing of buoys, lapping and whatever may be registered in a remote lake in Yorkshire. Committed to the initial assumption, the sequence of tracks goes on and no one opts for easy fixes or heavily processed cuttings, thus testifying to the existence of intrinsic auditive and strategic rhythmic elements in daily events.